Court Order Against German T-Mobile iPhone Sales 195
An anonymous reader writes "In a strange move, Vodafone applied for and was granted a restraining order against T-Mobile to prohibit the sale of iPhone in Germany. A regional court in Hamburg has issued a restraining order. According to CNNMoney.com: 'Specifically, Vodafone is questioning the iPhone's exclusive use in T-Mobile's network and the use of the device being limited to certain fees within T-Mobile's subscription offerings.' Vodaphone says they are not trying to halt iPhone sales completely; they seem to want a court to examine the questions of exclusivity and licensing."
Sigh (Score:2, Interesting)
Specifically, Vodafone is questioning the iPhone's exclusive use in T-Mobile's network and the use of the device being limited to certain fees within T- Mobile's subscription offerings.
That doesn't make sense (to me) - it's none of Vodaphone's business. The above would have made sense if they threw the words "consumer" and "choice". But, oh, that would be too much to ask. Who gives a heck about the consumer?
Vodafone isn't generally opposed to T-Mobile's exclusivity contract with Ap
in other words, "can we do this too?" (Score:5, Interesting)
Right. The evils of cell phone service in the USA are coming to Germany. Vodaphone just wants the court to verify that this is legit, so that they too can be evil.
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For example, they charge you for every kilobit starting from the first on the unlimited flat rate 3G/3GB Cellular broadband contract. So much for "flat rate unlimited". They void your phone insurance for every single fake reason you can think of.
So what they like to know if they can be even more evil and directly tell the customer to bend over (without the "or else") the way Apple does it. They would love to.
Anyway, overall, this is good for the consumer. If the court confirms t
Re:in other words, "can we do this too?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
You're criticizing the word choice of the (ridiculously brief) article, not the lawsuit or the laws the suit is based on.
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As for the limited rate selection - why not? It's a PDA, data services are probably assumed.
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It might also be illegal to require a certain subscription for a certain phone.
As I understand it, this is what is being tested.
If it is illegal, Apple will either have to stop selling their phones in the EU, or let their customers choose operator and subscription freely, like the other mobile-phone ma
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
Not as such no.
What is does is prevent one of the things that have caused the mobile market in the EU to function as well as it does, the seperation of hardware and services.
Because it limits choice for consumers.
Why shouldn't I be able to buy a phone seperately from my subscription?
Why shouldn't I be able to get a different subscription and keep using my phone?
Why should I? because it means more choice for me as a consumer, and it means providers have to stay competitive in their services instead of being able to 'buy' into fashionable items. It makes it easier for new providers to enter the market because they can directly compete on quality of service instead of exclusive fashion items.
Oh, but why not let the market figure it out?
The market could quite figure it out if most consumers were well informed. Its often kinda ignored, but informed customers are an essential part of a functioning free market, and if you don't have those, you'll have to compensate for that or you end up with effective monopolies.
Its one reason why if 2 products can be seperated easily (in this case a phone using the GSM standard, and the GSM network service) then in general, you can sell them as a bundle as long as you also allow people to buy the products seperately. Some parts of the EU have stronger laws in this then others, but the basic idea stays the same. This is the same kind of issue that Microsoft ran into with regards to tying things into Windows that are technically seperate products. Sure, they can do that as long as they also allow you to buy the unbundeled products.
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Are you smoking a crack pipe?
Lets see - UK Sales of Goods Act 1974. Any goods unfit for purpose can be returned, with no exception. Minimum 1 year warranty on all goods (about to be 2 years to bring in line with rest of Europe) as well - none of this 90 day rubbish
UK Distance Selling regs (applies to companies on Ebay as well
Trades Descrip
See pre-paid phones for precedent (Score:3, Insightful)
If Vodafone wins and gets a solution similar to France, then I could see them advertising themselves as the better provider, or sending a mail on their current customers that they can now take their
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No. Doesn't make any sense.
If Apple wanted to just sell the phone, they could sell it without a contract through their usual retail channels. (A number of the iPhone's features depend on the network supporting them, so it wouldn't have been such an easy sell, but that's Apple's problem). But instead they approached a number of telcos across the world and asked them to sell the phone with a contract attached to it. Every telco had the option of reading the contract an
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Informative)
Who else? AT&T doesn't exist over here and T-Mobile owns the D1 network, which has the most subscribers. Competitors like Vodafone, O2 or E-Plus are big, but not quite as big as T-Mobile, which had a huge advantage as it evolved out of the earlier federal post's telephone service.
T-Mobile really was the obvious choice.
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People like to complain. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:People like to complain. (Score:5, Funny)
Damn, I tried signing up with EIEIO for a couple months. My calls would constantly be interrupted by weird animal noises, especially ducks. And I could only get a signal in two places - on my farm and, strangely, at any McDonald's restaurant. Obviously I told them they could shove it.
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Re:People like to complain. (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget that Vodafone wanted the iPhone too (Score:2)
Yeah, but let's not forget that Vodafone wanted the IPhone too (In German) [spiegel.de]. They didn't get it because they didn't want to give Apple a share of the profits. Do you think they would have sued themselves if they had gotten an exclusive contract though? I'd say this is more of a case of "if we can't have the exclusive deal, then nobody shall".
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At least finished the sentence! Tsk.
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Re:People like to complain. (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, get 10 of them and leave job!
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have you ever tried just dropping your sim into an unlocked phone?
In the USA, only AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM and Sim cards. (At least of the 4 large carriers.) So for Verizon Wireless users, there is no sim card to just drop in. Also Verizon and Sprint use different encoding methods and radio frequencies from the GSM based carriers - another barrier to phone choice.
However, there are companies that sell phones compatible with the various networks. You do not have to get a phone through Verizon. The third party phones tend to be a little more expensive as they aren
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Verizon has a good network, but they are not consumer friendly when it comes to equipment choice.
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There are authorized Verizon Wireless shops that provide phones that work that Verizon never sold.
So there is more than one way around it being a Verizon sold phone.
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iPhone is neat but for the TRUE mobile warrior/wackadoo like me it's cute and flashy but fairly useless. I've clocked far too many hours on trains, buses and other inconvenient places for connectivity tethered to some form of cellular data. Tmobile, VZW, Cingular-ATT-HUGE-monopilistic-turd.
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WRT to releasing an SDK. Apple didn't need the SDK to be available from the off. They can sell all of the phones
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Irks me a bit, sure, but I just figure it's Apple's loss.
Interesting business in Germany? (Score:2, Insightful)
Reid
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quite to the contrary (Score:2)
It is, in fact, a goal of good business laws to set things up such that competing businesses have an interest to enforce consumer rights against each other.
In the US, trademark law works that way. In Europe, many other laws work that way, too.
Leaving things up to consumer orgs would not be very effective.
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Re:Interesting business in Germany? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight, if I want to sell a product, I have to follow the law? You're right, that's horrible, no wonder Germany is such a third-world country known for hating modern technology.
Next thing you know, some litigious bastard will suggest that AT&T should have to let us choose which phones to use on our landlines! You knew the deal when you signed up for service, it's only whiners who want to stop competition who suggest that renting your princess phone is too expensive.
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Yeah, I hear IBM followed German law pretty much to the letter since running operations there. I don't remember it slowing them down any.
(I know, I know, Godwin
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You knew the deal when you signed up for service, it's only whiners who want to stop competition who suggest that renting your princess phone is too expensive.
Exactly. So don't rent one. Problem solved. It's not like you have some natural right to possess an iPhone. Apple (and whoever else is involved in this) does not owe you anything. Just like you don't owe them anything. Now if you want to enter a business transaction with them, by all means contact them, negotiate, buy passively, whatever. Why on Earth you should scream bloody murder and invoke some law is beyond me.
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You knew the deal when you signed up for service, it's only whiners who want to stop competition who suggest that renting your princess phone is too expensive.
Exactly. So don't rent one. Problem solved. It's not like you have some natural right to possess an iPhone. Apple (and whoever else is involved in this) does not owe you anything.
What was that sound, up above? Oh my, that was the point missing your head!
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,267757,00.html [time.com]
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This concept is very clear right now in most of the things in EU policy. It's the same for most products, there should be a separation between manufacturer of a product and the service provider. Or at least have the option to choose service provider, no matter who you purchased the hardware from.
Another example, maybe a bit far fetched, but one I know well. I
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So if I get this straight, in Germany if Company A offers me $X dollars for my product, and Company B offers me $X+5, and I decide to do business only with Company B because I don't like Company A's deal, Company A can then sue me for anti-competitive practices? Sounds like I don't want to do business there...
No, they're saying that they want to know whether Apple can say they don't want to trade with all comers who want to pay $X+5. What a smart competitor would usually do is buy the phones at $X+5 (more precisely, X+5) and then sell it with another price plan than T-Mobile. Maybe even (shock!) sell it without a price plan, like in France. They want to know whether it is legal to discriminate in that manner.
That is not how business works (Score:2)
First off, in normal business you SELL your product for a price, it ain't a bloody auction. The entire idea is that the process has to be fair. If you want to sell something in europe you have to play by the rules. If Apple can't play by the rules, they are welcome to take their stuff home and shove it up the US consumers ass who are used to assuming the position.
You might be suprised to know this, but in europe all these exclusive deals and crippled phones are NOT legal and don't happen. When you got to b
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The only way you generally can buy a locked phone, in the EU, is through the provider concerned. You can even buy such phones at third party shops, but they typically come clearly labled with the service provider's logo.
The service provide
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As a European, I'm surprised by your assertion that it's illegal, because several operators in a variety of European countries offer crippled phones under exclusive deals, so it does in fact happen. This is because there is no EC directive that makes such tying illegal unless there is a monopoly involved (an EC-wide monopoly, not a monopoly in one or two countries).
Clue stick: the
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Or buy a phone which isn't locked in the first place.
Whats Wrong? (Score:3)
Re:Whats Wrong? (Score:5, Informative)
T-Mobile has stupefying marketshare in Germany. Not total, but stupefying. And it's not just in mobiles (called a 'handy' in Germany) but in WiFi, hotel systems, hotspots, xDSL, and pay-by-packet schemes.
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There are plenty of DSL players in the US, it's just that the US market is set up such that you often only get one because the incumbent player isn't required to lease out the lines, despite being allowed to use public land to run those lines, and being given the monopoly for running those lines.
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It's quite different in the energy market (electricity and natural gas) where we just have a bunch of mini-E
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They still dominate in DE. Handys aren't as strong as in situ landlines and services, but they're still #1. I have a Vodaphone, T-Mobile, and O2 SIM for my phone when I'm in DE. The O2 SIM use is least expensive, although their method of recharging them (go to the store, pay in cash for Americans) stinks. Deutsche Telekom, the parent, is dominant, too... and so Vodaphone has nexus to litigate the matter,
Not a monopoly? (Score:3, Insightful)
You might say the same for KPN or O2, never heard of them? They are the former goverment monopolies in the netherlands and great britain respectivly. (KPN uses both its normal name and Hi as a mobilephone brand, O2 was the mobile phone brand of BT till it split off) Now I give you one guess as to the name of the german mobile phone company that was the former goverment monopoly.
Feeling a bit stupid now? You should. Next time you start claiming you know anything about a company, try to find out where it cam
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good! (Score:4, Insightful)
I should be able to buy a cell phone and use it with any carrier I choose, technical limitations notwithstanding.
Re:good! (Score:4, Insightful)
That was the original point of the GSM standard. You were supposed to be able to buy a single phone and take it anywhere in the world that supported GSM. Sure, you may or may not have to pop in another SIM card if your provider didn't have roaming in the place where you were at. The whole locking the phones thing breaks that compatibility, as do the different band allocations around the place now.
If you want to unlock your (common) mobile phone Google can help. The Nokias can be unlocked by entering some code on the keypad that's derived from the IEMI number in the phone. There are several sites that will take an IEMI and give you the code. The same thing exists for all other major brands.
As for iPhone being locked to T-mobile. It sucks because I want one (not that I can get one here) but I don't want to be forced to use a particular carrier (of Apple's choice) just to use what is essentially a standard mobile phone with a few nice extra features.
Re:good! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, you can either not buy an iPhone, or unlock it yourself. Now, granted iPhone software 1.1.2 hasn't been unlocked yet, but it eventually will. Remember Apple quoting that around a quarter-million iPhones are unlocked?
In fact, even though the iPhone is technically tied to a contract, you buy it without signing any contract. In effect, it's a contract-bound phone where you don't sign any contract to purchase it.
Example - my iPhone works in Canada. I was in the US. I walked into an AT&T store. I said "I want an iPhone". I hand over my (Canadian) credit card, and they bill $399 to it (no sales tax in OR). No muss, no fuss, they wanted my cellphone number, and asked if I was with AT&T, to which I said no. Not even an address.
So I handed over $399, and a phone number. And I have my iPhone. No promise to sign up on an AT&T contract. No SSN. Nothing.
Come home, follow the instructions to activate and unlock the phone, and boom, it works with my Canadian SIM card. No contract, either. No visual voicemail, but no biggie. I don't even have voicemail on my account.
It's interesting, buying a locked, contract bound phone, without actually agreeing to do that. I saw nothing on any screen that said I had to keep my phone activated with AT&T for 2 years, nor clicked any such agreements.
Re:good! (Score:4, Informative)
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This is about the only way what T-Mobile and Apple are doing would be remotely legal in Germany (or anywhere else in the EU).
You can only buy the phone if you sign up for a 2 year contract in that shop - only after signing the agreement do you get the iPhone.
This is the point at which things become legally questionable. It would be as if a supermarket refused to sell you a glass unless you signed a contract to buy at least 4 litres of milk, per week fro
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How good is a phone if you can't make a phone call.
If you have to apply some third party hack in order to unlock the phone, you lose all warranties and can end up with 400 USD brick, if you accidentally upgrade to unsupported firmware.
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Well, you can either not buy an iPhone, or unlock it yourself.
Or, at least for people living in actual an democracy and/or a country that gives a shit about an actually free market, you could have a law which makes these kinds of coupled selling illegal. That's not to be whining about stuff like that, it is a necessity to maintain a proper competing free market. When companies are allowed to make deals where you can have A but only if you also by B from him they create artificial monopolies and raise the barrier of entry for other players on the market. When this goe
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In Germany, the iPhone is only sold by T-Mobile, and only in T-Mobile shops, and only in connection with the contract. You can't buy an iPhone at an Apple store, and you can't buy one without signing the contract.
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The latter is addressed by having phones with multiband capability.
The more features a phone has the more like
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You're perfectly free to buy that kind of phone, and the iPhone isn't one of them. If you don't like it, don't buy an iPhone.
I should be able to buy a cell phone for $50. And actually, I can - just the iPhone isn't one of them.
It doesn't seem right that in a market with a lot of choices for cell phones, the government should dictate a niche player's business model.
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Read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce) [wikipedia.org]
The practice of bundling two products or services together like this and forcing the consumer into 'take none or both' decisions has a dubious history at best, and while its often legal, its often not. Most people agree the laws preventing tying are justifiable, and for the good of the market, even if it is impossible to define precisely exactly where the line should be drawn between legal bundling, and illegal tying.
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If Steve Jobs sold plastic turds coated in lead paint i swear you people would still buy it for your kids to chew on, i swear.
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The thing is though, the plan they offer you is so much worse than other plans available, even other plans from the same provider, that the "free phone" is anything but. It's not a good deal to get a "free phone" pay $20/month and $0.10/minute rather than
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That's not what it says at all. European competition laws allow phones to be sold "locked down" to a particular carrier or service, but _an opinion_ by the Commission (opinions are guidelines that should, but don't have to be followed by member states) says that the service provider should supply a means of unlocking af
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This at least because some EU countries are in R2 and some are in R5.
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I like how the icon.. (Score:2, Funny)
American viewpoint (Score:4, Insightful)
The phone seems to be programmed (according to the article anyways...anyone have specific details?) to only use the T-Mobile network while in Germany. That should mean that while in Germany, it won't roam on Vodafone's, or anyone else's, network, thus allowing Vodafone to bill DT for the roaming agreement/charges, regardless of whether or not the customer has roaming included in their plan. Although I could be completely off, its really just a guess. I have used VZW phones in the past where it will have 0-10% of signal instead of switching to a competing (roaming) CDMA tower in sight. No, I can't hear you now.
As for "the use of the device being limited to certain fees within T-Mobile's subscription offerings." Perhaps they've setup a plan similar to AT&T/Cingular here where a number of charges that are typically a "per X" fee are instead a "flat rate" fee. They don't expand on it and I don't understand German (just English, French, and Spanish) to read the T-Mobile website for futher contract details; just a rate comparison box that's similar enough to the AT&Ts plans to understand. Vodafone doesn't want to compete against a non-standard, consumer friendly plan. VZW here wants you to pay for everything you can do with your phone. I'm surprised you don't get commercials while dialing from or to VZW handsets...oh...right...crappy pop ringers...
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From a European Viewpoint (Score:2)
We in the EU don't like that so much. We don't worship money as much as the US does, nor do we believe in the invisible hand of the market as much as you guys do. The fatal flaw in the theory being that the participants are supposed to be well informed and able to make comparative choices, which we all know is the opposite of what marketing does.
Well anyway. There's good and bad in both appr
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news flash: iphone lock in sucks (Score:2, Informative)
2. carrier lock in is the worst of the worst, you don't get to make excuses for it just because it's apple.
3. many EU countries have laws against crapy lock in products like this, it's good for the consumer.
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wake up to your self.
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Court in Hamburg (Score:3, Informative)
Dear German Apple fanboys (Score:2)
Looks like a great PR move to me. I'm sure customers will flock to them for having saved them from getting the iPhones they wanted.
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Summary is misleading (Score:5, Informative)
The iPhone is locked forever! (Score:2)
You can unlock every phone after your contract expires here in Germany. I don't think there's a way Apple and T-Mobile can change this.
It will be very interesting to see how much Orange will charge for an unlocked iPhone that it has to sell in accordance to frech laws.
And I'm astonished that Apple doesn't do this in all countries. Why not simply sell an iPhone for 400 Euros with T-Mobile contract and 800 Euro without a contract (like everybody else). Apple shou
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If I understand Voda(.de) are suing to rule on the legality of locked phones?
As a matter of course Voda (uk) and Tmob (uk) (3, orange and O2) all lock their phones here in the uk. Voda however unlock them for free after the contract you bought them under expires.
I find the manner that voda (and the rest) completely screw up their phones with "branding", and give away 300GBP+ phones to NEW customers, rather than look after their current user base.
Let's face it, when it costs mo